BN Book Review: Women Rent Men and Secrets Here by Damilare Kuku | Review by The BookLadyNG

Writing is bleeding. It is peeling off layers of yourself on the pages and letting them assume a form you have no control over when they reach a reader. It is like being Dr Frankenstein with each manuscript; assembling different parts of a whole to make a creature, only subject to you before getting into the hands of a publisher. Women Rent Men and Secrets Here justifies this claim. 

Damilare Kuku dropped this bombshell of a story onto our laps, her third book, with the expectation that we would devour it even with our palms scalding. Guess what? We did. Ara Ikoyi, the canvas on which Damilare painted this story, is a writer. She is successful and brilliant, but battling writer’s block. She most likely loves deadlines more than Adams Douglas, who revels in the “whooshing noise they make as they go by.” Her agent and editor make her email a revolving door of reminders and updates. But the most intriguing part of her story is the death that happens in House Twenty-One and how it gets woven into her writing career.

Imagine battling writer’s block, and you get a notification that your rent has increased because someone just died in your estate. The natural response is to question when murder became a precursor to rent increment. But this is the least of the crazy things to unfold in this story. Ara, instead of worrying over spilt milk, decides to milk the story for her next bestseller. But her success could mean life or death. This goes to show that indeed writers do bleed on pages, literally. Being a writer is oscillating between regretting your life’s choices and being incredibly grateful for your art. It is “that suspended breath you take before your teeth sink into the succulent flesh of an agbalumo. The tension before the juice spurts, when you have no idea whether it will be sweet or sour? Whether you will end up regretting your decision to purchase the fruit just because it is in season and it brings up nostalgic childhood memories? Being a writer is exactly like that.”

It is easy to infer that Damilare Kuku wrote part of herself into this story. Her works have been met with both backlash and praise, as exemplified in Ara’s story. You either love her work or hate it. There’s no in between. Ara’s character gives readers a glimpse of what it feels like to be Damilare Kuku. She shows us that writing for your audience is not mutually exclusive to writing for yourself. A writer can achieve both with the intention of healing and growing. 

Reading this story is like gaining a front row seat to the secret lives of women with jaw-breaking, damning secrets. As soon as the first layer is peeled, the insane rot of the layers beneath begins to unfold. The deep, dark mess of their lives, quietly simmering beneath the surface, becomes clear as day. Ara’s foray into the world of House Twenty-One Estate’s women also exposes the parts of her life that she buried under the folds of her success as a writer. After each “I want to rent a secret,” is a story of survival and resilience that unites the women of House Twenty-One. There is not one secret that does not demand attention and a strong digestive system. Between listening to these women spill their guts, Ara shows us her writing process and the parts of her life that signify she’s on the right track.

This story is also a nod toward the isolation of writing. Writers often work in isolation, carrying their questions and uncertainties in silence. The solitude, the long stretches of doubt, and the quiet persistence are part of what make a writer’s life fascinating. The story reads like the brainchild of someone who understands that writing is not just about putting words down, but about enduring the process long enough to make them meaningful. For Ara, writing is not optional. It is like breathing. She either writes or she collapses under the weight of her past. It is not a hobby or a passing urge but a necessity, something that must be done to remain whole. She understands that the stories that come to her do not simply disappear; they linger, press, and rot if not given form. 

Damilare Kuku’s Women Rent Men and Secrets Here is compelling not only for the secrets it tells, but for what it reveals about the act of writing itself. It reminds us that writers give more than time to their work; they give emotional energy, attention, and often parts of themselves. They do this because the alternative is unthinkable: silence, stagnation and the slow death of untold stories. Ara exemplifies this in the way she handles the secrets of these women, bearing their weight until they fill her blank pages. It goes to show that writing, at its core, is not about ease; it is about necessity.